The learning mindset paradox
When researcher Amy Edmonson asked leaders from several industries, "What percent of the failures in your organization should be considered blameworthy?", Their answers predominantly remained in the single digits "Perhaps 1% to 5%". Yet when she asks "What percent of failures are treated as blameworthy?", they respond after a pause or laugh "70% - 90%".
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We now generally agree that failure teaches us just as much as success, if not more. Although the principle is well understood, organizations frequently struggle to put the idea into reality. Even in the most forward-thinking and compassionate companies, admitting failure can cause emotions of inadequacy and embarrassment. An organization’s ability to learn is a competitive advantage in today’s market and teams are the central learning unit of any organization. It is not unexpected then, that team learning through error management is frequently linked to higher team performance.
Of course, failure is bad, but it is also sometimes inevitable, necessary and worth learning from.
Blame is coercive. It is cheap and fast. Learning through failure requires patience and dedication. In the long run, though, one will give long-lasting positive outcomes, and the other will sap team cohesion, making it less likely that people will own up to errors, and less likely that organizations can learn from them.
Myths of error management
1. All failure is welcome
Feeling you can make mistakes on a team does not mean, feeling you will never be held accountable for them. In her book The Fearless Organization, Amy Edmondson talks about three categories of failure:
- Preventable (never good news)
Deviations from established practices that result in negative consequences are preventable failures. An eye injury caused by someone who neglects to wear the indicated and available safety goggles at a factory is a failure that could have been avoided. They did not abide by a clear set of rules.
In order to create a safe, motivating, and encouraging learning environment, preventable, deviant, and unethical failures must be sanctioned accordingly. Most reasonable people will appreciate that certain error prevention mindsets and regulations are important. The sanctioning of the violation of these is a sign of a system that uses and enforces error prevention and error management mindset.
That is if complexity-related failures and intelligent-related errors are used as a learning source and celebrated.
- Complex (still not good news)
When a variety of variables combine in a way that may have never happened before, complex failures can happen in well-known circumstances. Complex failures can occasionally, but not always, be avoided with diligence.
For instance, an unintentionally altered date format by a developer, which was not picked up as an error by the code review procedure and test suite. In these occurrences, it is important to understand what went wrong in the process to mitigate future happenings.
- Intelligent (not great, but good news due to the value added)
Contrarily, intelligent failures, as the name suggests, need to be celebrated in order to promote more of them. They are the result of creative intelligent risk-taking that can always be learned from. Organizations such as Google, who adopt error management orientation, make a point of celebrating failure and are familiar with the notion of intelligent failure. These have various facets in organizations and are often referred to as “pilot product launches”, “customer feedback sessions” or “beta software releases”.
Even in failure, the success of these often comes from, if we learn from how, why and what went wrong in these stages, not who.
The takeaway here isn’t to overlook mistakes, rather, they should be dealt with constructively, and appropriately.
Treating complex failure as preventable is a recurring problem in teams that lack an embracing error management attitude. For instance, placing more emphasis on the developer who unintentionally altered the date format than on the code review procedure and test suite that missed this error. Team members gradually become less risk-taking as a result of knowing they would be unfairly held accountable for issues outside their control.
Appropriately sanctioning avoidable failures, collectively problem solving complex failure, and celebrating intelligent failure, creates a learning climate where people take well-intentioned risk with a creative mindset and innovative result.
2. Silence means no mistakes
We are living in a workplace silence epidemic. Up to 85% of respondents to a study reported at least once when they felt unable to raise a concern with their managers, even though they believed the issue was important . Concerns of being perceived or labeled negatively and fear of destroying professional relationships were the two most often given justifications for keeping quiet.
"A culture of silence is a dangerous culture".
Research by Amy Edmondson, and research led by Google within Project Aristotle, shows that the ability to be vulnerable, to take interpersonal risks within teams - such as admitting a mistake, asking questions and contributing with ideas - is one key factor that links all high-performing teams . This factor is well known as psychological safety. The lack of psychological safety can present itself as a silent culture.
3. Harmless jokes
Teams that engage with OpenDecide often state "My manager doesn’t blame us. They encourage risk-taking and react well to errors. Why then is it that we still feel that we can’t take interpersonal risks in this team?"
The culture a team builds for itself starts in the small everyday interactions. The lunchtime jokes, the everyday acknowledgments, the opennesses to asking ‘vulnerable’ questions. In this sense, interpersonal relationship conflicts, mockery, and inability to accept small everyday failures can have a knock-on effect on people's willingness to admit bigger task failures. For much innovation and creativity, it is almost desirable to have a task ‘’conflict’’ but not relationship ‘’conflict’’.
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Book a demoThree steps towards error management mindset
🙋 Culture of humility
Leaders in error management cultures accept they are part of the system and take responsibility for their own mistakes, such as failing to adequately communicate a crucial topic or making poor choices, and don't demand perfection from others or themselves. Publicly being uncertain of things, openly asking questions and being willing to receive the answers, whilst showing openness to learn regardless of the individual's position in the company, helps foster this.
A culture of humility, most powerfully starts with the leader. They have the ability to encourage behaviors that foster team norms. When others ask for feedback, leaders can ensure to make the time to give them the feedback and congratulate them for their openness to receive it. Anyone at any level of the team can do this. Ask for feedback - and be open to learning from the advice of their team.
It takes a surprising amount of bravery for employees to point out ways organizations can learn and improve, and to enquire about things ‘they should already know’. Leaders can make it easier for their teams to be humble, by appreciating the effort taken, and by balancing their feedback.
🧐 Prevent the complex and preventable
Error management does not mean ignoring the important steps of error prevention. The two go hand in hand. Ensuring minimum preventable and complex errors can be done through simple actions such as establishing a clear location for team documentation, creating video recordings of process walk-throughs, or using software that encourages collaboration.
Other examples include incident forms and regular dedicated ‘’error celebration’’ meetings with the team. This will help create a culture where everyone, not just solo heroes or villains can contribute to problem-solving and future prevention.
👥 Team reflexivity
Review what went wrong as a team. After action reviews are incredibly common in the military, healthcare and medical fields and more and more companies are adopting these. They are positively associated with a variety of team performance indicators, including reduction of errors, innovation and overall effectiveness. The intention is problem-solving, looking at the context of work, the infrastructure, and the process in place that could have led to this failure.
Leaders and team members must offer a caring mindset, dedicated time and tools to implement this. This emphasis on teamwork promotes opportunities for collaborative learning as well as collaborative recognition. By sharing the learnings and best practices created, the team may also support and motivate one another, helping to combat low self-esteem.
We are concerned with Why something happened, not Who is responsible.
Breaking the fear barrier: embracing failure for success and innovation
Executives frequently, and reasonably, worry that a supportive attitude toward failure will foster a workplace where anything goes. Instead, by recognizing failure is unavoidable, through strong leadership, they can create a culture of team learning which embraces an error management mindset. This routinely acknowledges setbacks of all sizes, carefully assesses these and encourages opportunities for experimentation and innovation. Tools such as after action reviews, culture of humility, and team focused development processes, are part of the error management toolbox.
Fast-paced, high-risk environments, where teams rely on the ability to react quickly, speak up, and report errors in the interests of immediate service delivery benefit from both error prevention and error management, but the two must come hand in hand. Organizational climates characterized by both error prevention and error management promote teamwork, innovative thinking, and creative problem-solving, all of which are crucial for thriving organizations.
Organizations should care about people's ability to learn through error because the interest is not just missing potentially threatening information, it is also losing out on creative ideas for innovative solutions.
“Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will”
Article references:
"Add Humility to Your Error Management Toolbox." AOM Insights, pp.
Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. John Wiley & Sons.
"Milliken, F.J., Morrison, E.W. and Hewlin, P.F., "An Exploratory Study of Employee Silence: Issues that Employees Don't Communicate Upward and Why," Journal of Management Studies no. 40.6 (2003), pp. 1453-1476."
